Word.ws English Dictionary

horrour

horrour is the obsolete spelling of horror.

Meaning of horror

Noun

horror (countable and uncountable, plural horrors)

  1. An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.
    • Their swarthy Hosts wou'd darken all our Plains, / Doubling the native Horror of the War, / And making Death more grim.1712, Joseph Addison, Cato: A tragedy, published 1750, page 44
  2. Something horrible; that which excites horror.
    • I saw many horrors during the war.
  3. Intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence.
    • “Mrs. Yule's chagrin and horror at what she called her son's base ingratitude knew no bounds ; at first it was even thought that she would never get over it. […] ”1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition...
  4. (uncountable) A genre of fiction designed to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense.
    • Those who enjoy horror, stories overflowing with blood and black mystery, will be grateful to Richard Marsh for writing ‘The Beetle.’1917 February 11, New York Times, Book reviews, page 52
    1. (countable) An individual work in this genre.
  5. (colloquial, countable) A nasty or ill-behaved person; a rascal or terror.
    • The neighbour's kids are a pack of little horrors!

See all 8 meanings of horror

Forms of horrour

pluralhorrours

Origin of horrour

From Middle English horrour, from Old French horrour, from Latin horror (“a bristling, a shaking, trembling as with cold or fear, terror”), from horrere (“to bristle, shake, be terrified”). Displaced native Old English ōga.

Questions about horrour

What is horrour the obsolete spelling of?
Horrour is the obsolete spelling of horror.

Words near horrour in the dictionary

  1. horrorstruck
  2. horrorthon
  3. horrorthons
  4. horrorzine
  5. horrorzines
  6. horrour
  7. horrours
  8. horrow
  9. Horrox
  10. Horroxian
  11. Horrs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: horrour (page history and authors); horror (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “horrour.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/horrour. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.